Canederli in broth
Canederli (Knödel in German) are dumplings made from stale bread, the signature of South Tyrol — a region of Italy where most people speak German and the cooking is close to Austria's. Bread cubes soaked in milk, mixed with egg, speck, onion and parsley, rolled into balls and cooked in broth. A leftovers dish that became the emblem of the region. What matters is genuinely stale bread — fresh falls apart in the water — and not kneading the mixture hard, which turns the dumplings rubbery.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Soaking the bread 30 min
- Mixture 15 min
- Shaping 10 min
- Cooking 25 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneCut the bread
Cut the stale bread into 1 cm cubes. If yours is fresh, dry it for 15 minutes in a 150°C oven.
Ingredients: 250 g stale white bread or rolls, crusts removed · 250 ml warm milk · 2 pcs eggs · 120 g speck or smoked bacon, diced · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 3 tbsp parsley · 40 g plain flour · ¼ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ¼ tsp black pepper
Soak the bread
Pour the warm milk over it, stir and leave 30 minutes, stirring once halfway, until every cube softens.
Ingredients: 250 g stale white bread or rolls, crusts removed · 250 ml warm milk · 2 pcs eggs · 120 g speck or smoked bacon, diced · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 3 tbsp parsley · 40 g plain flour · ¼ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ¼ tsp black pepper
Soft, but not collapsed into mush.Fry speck and onion
Melt the butter and fry the finely chopped onion with the speck for 6 minutes, until the onion softens and the speck colours. Cool.
Ingredients: 250 g stale white bread or rolls, crusts removed · 250 ml warm milk · 2 pcs eggs · 120 g speck or smoked bacon, diced · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 3 tbsp parsley · 40 g plain flour · ¼ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ¼ tsp black pepper
Mix
Add the eggs, speck and onion, parsley, flour, nutmeg, salt and pepper to the bread. Combine by hand only until it holds — the less you work it, the lighter the dumplings.
Ingredients: 250 g stale white bread or rolls, crusts removed · 250 ml warm milk · 2 pcs eggs · 120 g speck or smoked bacon, diced · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 3 tbsp parsley · 40 g plain flour · ¼ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ¼ tsp black pepper
Mix briefly — they should stay fluffy.Check the texture
The mixture should hold as a ball without falling apart. Too wet, add a spoonful of flour; too dry, a spoonful of milk. Rest 10 minutes.
Ingredients: 250 g stale white bread or rolls, crusts removed · 250 ml warm milk · 2 pcs eggs · 120 g speck or smoked bacon, diced · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 3 tbsp parsley · 40 g plain flour · ¼ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ¼ tsp black pepper
Shape
With damp hands roll 8 balls the size of a small apple (about 110 g each — there is about 900 g of mixture), smoothing them between your palms.
Ingredients: 250 g stale white bread or rolls, crusts removed · 250 ml warm milk · 2 pcs eggs · 120 g speck or smoked bacon, diced · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 3 tbsp parsley · 40 g plain flour · ¼ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ¼ tsp black pepper
Test one
Bring the broth to the boil in a wide pot (about 24 cm) and drop in a walnut-sized test ball made from a spoonful of the mixture. Cook 3 minutes — if it breaks up, work another spoonful of flour into the mixture and try again.
Ingredients: 1500 ml clear beef or chicken broth · 2 tbsp chives · 30 g Parmesan, grated
Cook and serve
Lower the dumplings into the boiling broth, reduce the heat and simmer uncovered 15–18 minutes — the surface should barely move. For a perfectly clear broth, cook the dumplings in salted boiling water instead and transfer them to the hot broth. Serve two per plate with broth, Parmesan and chives.
Ingredients: 1500 ml clear beef or chicken broth · 2 tbsp chives · 30 g Parmesan, grated
A bare simmer, or the dumplings break up.
Before you start
Without broth
Canederli are also served dry: the cooked dumplings are dressed with about 40 g of melted butter with sage and dusted with Parmesan. A serving is then about 530 kcal.
Variations
Tyrol also makes them with spinach (200 g cooked and squeezed, instead of speck), with cheese or with liver. The bread and milk proportion stays the same.
Storage
Freeze raw dumplings on a tray, then bag them — cook from frozen, adding 5 minutes. Cooked ones keep 2 days in the fridge, stored apart from the broth.
